Cape Girardeau's Dave Hardesty is living his Mississippi dream

Some 1,300 miles up the Mississippi River from Cape Girardeau, Dave Hardesty is living out a decades-old dream this morning.

In modernized Huck Finn-fashion, he's gliding down the Mighty Mississippi in a 17-foot-long kayak. The journey calls for a daily pastime of paddling and living on pouches of tuna fish and chicken for the next six weeks.

Some people have called his trip crazy. Hardesty sees it as answering a call that has echoed in his mind for 20 years.

Perhaps it was Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi", or his own childhood fascination with overcoming strife, but Hardesty has difficulty remembering a time when he wasn't enthralled with the idea of making the 1,360 mile trip from the river's start at Lake Itaska, Minn. , to Cape Girardeau.

"I never doubted I was going to at least attempt it," Hardesty said in an interview shortly before he left Cape Girardeau July 28.

He's read nearly every book on the subject available at local libraries. He has spoken with others who have made the trek or have taken kayak excursions on local rivers over the past year.

He was prepared to leave earlier this summer, but postponed after learning his daughter was pregnant. His grandson was born July 23 and Hardesty was on the water at Lake Itaska a week later.

He plans to camp in a tent at night and travel by day, stopping occasionally in river towns to replenish his water supply. He packed 30 pouches of tuna fish and chicken, 12 packets of flavored noodles, 70 trail mix bars, 40 instant oatmeal packets, a large box of minute rice, 40 granola bars and a jar of peanut butter to live off for the next 40 or so days.

He'll bathe and wash his dishes in the same small plastic tub, sleep on the ground and listen to the second-hand transistor radio he purchased to keep him company.

He has charts of the river and is more concerned about the hazards of other people than the water.

By now, the water feels like an old friend.

"I can't think any more prominent feature in our lives than the Mississippi River," said Hardesty. "It effects our income, flooding, our history."

cmiller@semissourian.com

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